Got Live?

Duke Wilbury's favorite live tunes from the greatest live albums ever unleashed.

Stream online here:

Download for iTunes here:
Got Live.mp3

While a great live album captures a moment, the best live albums exist as testaments to their creators, as definitions of their essence.

The art of the live album seems antiquated these days. In the 70s, artists like Kiss, Cheap Trick and Peter Frampton found their greatest success with live albums, enjoying massive album sales and even spinning off chart-topping radio hits, while other artists like The Allman Brothers and the MC5 enjoyed their greatest artistic and critical successes with live albums. While the Ear Candy Update couldn't give a damn about chart-topping hit singles we are concerned about the dying art of the live album. Somewhere along music's continuing narrative live, in between popular rock moving away from the ideals of virtuosity and pure energy (and popular music moving farther away from rock in the first place), live shows becoming excessively easy to bootleg, and supposedly legendary live acts like Phish and Widespread Panic soiling many on the form, the live album essentially lost its power, becoming increasingly less of an artistic or commercial prospect and increasingly more like a mere collector’s item.

Here at the Ear Candy Update we're exploring the best cuts off the best live albums, neither to support nor question this trend, but perhaps merely to demonstrate why the live album is an art worth saving in the first place. We may never see the likes of a Frampton Comes Alive! again (and to many, that isn’t such a bad thing in the first place), but as long as great artists are still touring with passion and a desire not to merely replicate the studio experience, the live album will remain relevant. We hope so, anyway.

As always, if you have any suggestions, bitches, gripes, complaints or praise, email the Duke right here: Dukewilbury@yahoo.com

The tracks:
Kick Out The Jams - The MC5
Bring It On Home to Me - Sam Cooke
Ain't No Sunshine - Bill Withers
Stormy Monday - The Allman Brothers Band
Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On - Jerry Lee Lewis
Wanted Man - Johnny Cash
Try Me - James Brown
Try A Little Tenderness - Otis Redding
About a Girl - Nirvana
Life During Wartime - The Talking Heads
Cadillac Ranch - Bruce Springsteen
Young Man Blues - The Who
Rock & Roll - Led Zeppelin
Honky Tonk Women - The Rolling Stones

Click on the album cover to visit the band's website.





Share

Comments

Popular Posts